


Pedantic Affectations

by fannishlove, relenafanel



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Accidental Relationship, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Professors, Bucky is the competent one, Competence Kink, Dating, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Humor, Identity Porn, Language Kink, M/M, Misunderstandings, Secret Identity, Steve is kind of awful at this secret identity thing, Vigilantism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 07:41:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19268770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fannishlove/pseuds/fannishlove, https://archiveofourown.org/users/relenafanel/pseuds/relenafanel
Summary: Steve Rogers: khaki pants and ugly tweed wearing art history professor specializing in historical queer art (by day). Is actually Captain America, vigilante and the bane of Detective Barnes’s existence (by night).Detective Bucky Barnes: A very clever cop who suspects something is up with Steve.  Is frustrated that Captain America exists and is dedicated to finding him because helovesa good puzzle.So, how does Steve convince Bucky that he's too boring to be Captain America? Go on a date with him.(Steve is kind of really, really bad at this secret identity thing)





	1. The one where they meet and Steve yeets himself over a building to get away

**Author's Note:**

> This is written and dedicated to the amazing fannishlove for the Captain America Reverse Big Bang based on their art and plot idea. Make sure to stop by Tumblr or Twitter to interact with their artwork! (links to both of us at the end)

 

 

 

**Pedantic Affectations**

story by: relenafanel

art by: fannishlove

 

* * *

 

 

Like so many things in Steve’s life, he should have known better, but like so many things in Steve’s life, he hadn’t focused on the consequences of his actions. He’d never been someone who could stand by and watch as someone was hurt, either through words or through violence.  He’d always been the kind of person to stand up, to step up, and to butt in.

 

So what if he shouldn’t be drawing attention to himself?

 

SO WHAT if he wasn’t wearing his Captain America costume?

 

“So, what? You disarmed the mugger yourself?” the Detective asked, an inscrutable expression on his face.  He was wearing plainclothes, a pair of slacks and a button-up, but his shoes were black sneakers.  It said to Steve that this was a man who didn’t spend a lot of time at his desk, but wanted you to think he did.

 

He was the kind of man prepared to run after a perpetrator and succeed.

 

It stood out to Steve that he wasn’t being interviewed by a regular officer.  So, either Detective Plainclothes was here for the mugger.

 

Or he was here for Steve.

 

“Yes,” Steve answered. Internally, he sweating. “What precinct did you say you were from, again?”

 

“I didn’t.”

 

“Oh, I thought I saw it on TV as a standard? My mistake.” Steve feigned confusion and watched as the man became visibly annoyed.  

 

“I don’t know what kind of TV you’ve been watching, but it’s not.  I told you my name and rank, do you need to hear it again?”

 

“That would be great,” Steve answered with a polite smile.

 

“Detective Barnes,” he answered with an impatient bite to his tone. “I’m working with a special task force assigned with investigating heroism in the city.”

 

Ah ha!  As a trick, it worked, but it definitely was not an answer Steve wanted to hear.  There was a frown on his face when he answered.  “I didn’t realize doing the right thing was a crime these days.”

 

“Doing the right thing isn’t,” Barnes answered in a blunt tone that said he was done with the conversation.  “So you disarmed the mugger yourself? How?”

 

“I don’t know, I was working off adrenalin and terror, mostly.”  Steve held up his hands to look harmless and clueless and not like someone who disarmed muggers regularly.

 

“Miss Romero said in her statement that you were calm and seemed to know what to do.”

 

Steve shrugged.  “I’m her Art History professor. She looks up to me. I doubt she could see the way my hands were shaking.  I wasn’t very calm, I just didn’t like having a gun in my face and my first instinct was to slap it away,” he ducked his head and winced.  “It was stupid.”

 

“You slapped it away,” Barnes questioned, his disbelief evident in his tone.

 

“Open handed,” Steve admitted. “And he dropped it and ran.”

 

“You slapped the gun?” Barnes repeated.

 

“With my hand,” Steve confirmed, showing it to Barnes.  There was a scrape mark on it that had barely broken skin, but was still visible.  

 

“Ok,” Detective Barnes said, closing his notebook. “Thanks for your time.”

 

x.x.x.x.

 

Truth be told, that wasn’t the first time Steve had encountered Detective Barnes. Or, maybe it was more accurate to say that was the first time _Steve_ had encountered Detective Barnes as himself, but his alter-ego had come across the man the week before.

 

...When the detective had tased Steve in the back after he’d finished tying up 6 gang members and leaving them for the police to find.  

 

When Barnes said he was investigating heroism in the city what he meant was that he was tasked with tracking down and stopping Captain America, Brooklyn’s vigilante.

 

And since he was 2 for 2 with encounters with Steve, he also seemed to be highly competent.  The only reason Steve hadn’t been arrested during their first encounter was because the taser hadn’t perforated his Captain America uniform.

 

He’d just have to be more careful. Maybe use some of his stealth training and keep to the shadows occasionally.

 

Stop slapping guns away from muggers while still carrying his work briefcase.

 

Things like that.

 

x.x.x.

 

“Do you even have stealth training?” Sam asked him, the expression on his face warring between incredulity and unimpressed as he downed the rest of his beer in response to Steve’s declaration.  His face seemed to say ‘you’re going to be arrested within the week, nice knowing you pal.’

 

x.x.x.

 

Steve had a lot of things to think about.  He had to worry if he should retire the Captain America mantle or whether he’d rather stand by his morals and go to jail for it.  He had to worry about preparing three final exams for his classes.  He was trying to figure out who was dumping severed doll heads into playgrounds and whether it was a tasteless prank or an actual threat.

 

And, on top of it, he was juggling what amounted to two full time jobs and a manhunt after him.

 

But, despite all that, it didn’t stop him from almost going over the hour in his lecture.  One of the students had set an alarm on their phone to go off as a five-minute warning for him, which he was taking as altruistic but he was sure was something they all laughed about behind his back.

 

“Ok,” Steve conceded after a two-minute warning went off.  “There’s no way to wind down on this topic, so please read the section on Charles Demuth in chapter 5 of your textbook before the next class.  It will be on the exam.”

 

Way too few of the students took note of that, he was disappointed to find.  He watched as they filed out almost more effectively than if someone had pulled the fire alarm, with the exception of the few who stayed to ask questions.  It probably wasn’t a coincidence that Angie Romero was hovering in the back waiting for everyone to leave the day after he stopped a mugger aiming to grab her purse.

 

“Professor,” she said, hovering awkwardly in front of Steve’s desk once there was an opening.  She looked around her to see if anyone was watching before continuing.  Steve assumed she wanted to thank him again, and was getting ready to graciously accept her thanks while gently telling her that her gratitude was misplaced.  “That hot cop stopped me before class to ask about you.”

 

Steve opened his mouth and had to pause to give his brain a moment to readjust.  “Did he?” he asked in a bland tone.

 

“Yeah. He wanted to know what you were like,” she said, smiling mischievously.  “What we all think of you.  I told him we all think you’re hot, but,” and then she gestured to Steve in a way he might be insulted by. “I mean, you’re wearing high waisted khakis and tweed right now, Professor, and I haven’t seen you wear anything else.”

 

“I…”

 

“It works for you in a nerdy kind of way,” she rushed to amend, flushing a bit in embarrassment.  “But if he wants to date you,” she gestured at Steve again, “he shouldn’t expect you to be anything other than who you are, you know?”

 

Steve knew. He knew exactly who Detective Barnes thought he was. “Did he seem to think I might be?”

 

“He asked if I ever saw you with a motorcycle,” she told him.  “And I set him straight. I mean, you’re not going to take the subway every day at the same time I do if you own a motorcycle.  But I promise, I talked you up!” she continued at Steve’s frown.  “I told him the most interesting thing about you is how passionate you are about queer art history. How your eyes light up when you talk about it and stuff, you know, the things we all talk about.”

 

“Thank you,” Steve said, trying not to sound sardonic at the confirmation that a good percentage of his students spoke about his levels of attractiveness. He’d seen his ratemyprofessor.com rating. His coworkers in the department liked to do dramatic readings of them sometimes.

 

His coworkers weren’t really people Steve enjoyed to be around.

 

“I thought you should know he’s interested in you.” She adjusted her bag on her shoulder and moved to leave.  “My mom gave me good advice once, she said that if a boy can’t see you for who you are, he’s not worth your time. He wanted to know if you have a _motorcycle_ ,” she wrinkled her nose.  “Not worth it.”

 

“She’s right,” Steve managed to reply without choking on the words.  Once she left, he looked down at the papers on his desk in thought.

 

Barnes might be the first person in a really long time who seemed to _see_ Steve and that wasn’t a good thing.  The man was too good at his job if he looked at a high-waisted-khakis-tweed-wearing professor and saw Captain America.

 

Because he was right.

 

x.x.x.

 

It followed that Captain America would encounter Detective Barnes shortly afterwards. There had been a series of tweets about someone spray painting the swastika in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, and if anything made Steve’s blood boil it was a hate crime.

 

So he put on his suit, parked a few blocks away, and was prepared to punch a Nazi in the face.

 

Then Detective Barnes opened the door of his car and shone a flashlight in his face.

 

Steve bolted to the left.

 

He’d spent years wandering these streets and doing his best to keep to the shadows, and so he knew the best way out wasn’t on the ground. He grabbed the ladder for the first fire escape he found that seemed reachable, jumping on top of a dumpster and then over the railing.  He continued climbing three steps at a time, hearing Barnes enter the alley on his tail.

 

“Steve?” Barnes yelled from the bottom of the fire escape, and Steve knew he was looking for a reaction, did his best not to tense his shoulders as he jumped over the ledge to the roof. Barnes was too close for comfort. Steve was sure now that Barnes had figured out that Steve monitored emergency calls and had an algorithm trawling social media for news before the police. It wasn’t even a particularly difficult thing to set up. There were about 5 Google Chrome extensions that did just that.

 

Either way, he’d figured out the type of emergencies Steve was likely to respond to. He’d figured out that at least half of Captain America’s appearances weren’t due to happenstance or chance.  

 

And he’d used it against Steve.

 

“Are you Steve Rogers?” Barnes yelled, still in the alleyway, loudly enough that Steve was able to hear it as he jumped six feet between two buildings.  Fuck.  Fuck.

 

He made it back to his staging area, or as Sam liked to call it ‘the secret lair’, and looked at all of his equipment.  It didn’t take much to be Captain America. He had a uniform, a gaming computer capable of searching those algorithms in the background, and his motorcycle.  If he burned it all (metaphorically) it wouldn’t even be a great loss. 

 

Financially.

 

Personally, it would be like losing a piece of himself. For Brooklyn, it would mean being a little less safe.  He didn’t see any other choice.

 

x.x.x.

 

“Why do you think Brooklyn is your responsibility,” Carol asked, getting through Steve’s defenses and taking out his legs with her quarterstaff.  They trained together every Thursday morning when Steve didn’t have classes, and every Thursday morning she trounced him.

 

She was one of the only people in the world who knew he was Captain America.  She’d been there during his origin story doing exactly what she was doing now: training with him and questioning why he was such an idiot. She wasn’t someone he went to for advice and expected to get anything helpful, but she was good at pointing out when he was being dumb.

 

“It’s not,” Steve answered, flat on his back and looking up at her.  Then he moved his legs and tried to trip her back. Carol was too good to fall for that trick, but it allowed Steve the moment he needed to get back to his feet.

 

“See, you say that,” she told him, getting back in a ready position.  “But I don’t believe that you believe a word you’re saying.”

 

“Because it’s my home,” Steve tried again.

 

“Are you asking me or telling me?” Carol answered and then attacked.  “Because it sounds like you’re asking me.”


	2. the one where Steve bats his eyelashes and Bucky bats his eyelashes and then they poke each other in the eye

 

“Detective,” Steve acknowledged, looking up from grading papers to find the man standing over him.  Before looking, Steve had assumed someone wanted to steal the extra chair from his table-for-two and so was surprised to realize he was being watched.  He was less surprised when he realized who was watching him.

 

“Doctor Rogers,” Barnes answered, sitting down across from Steve with a narrow-eyed look of assessment.

 

Steve wondered what he saw.  Outwardly, Steve took pains to look frumpy and unassuming, so he couldn’t help but wonder what Barnes could see when he looked at Steve.

 

“I heard you were asking about me,” Steve said, shuffling his papers with the very definition of absentminded professor in his actions.  Steve wasn’t very good at subterfuge, so the best defense was to go on the offense and use the strategy he’d learned from the conversation he had with his student: that Barnes was interested in Steve.  Romantically.  “So I can’t say I’m surprised to see you.  I’m not free this weekend, two of the classes I teach just turned in papers, but maybe next weekend?” Steve asked, giving the detective an uncertain glance.  The over-the-glasses move was one of his favorites.  It helped sell that he was harmless.

 

“What?” Barnes asked, visibly confused.

 

“A date?” Steve asked, feigning being flustered.  It took every skill he possessed not to burst out laughing.  “You wanted to know more about me? Oh God, did I get it wrong?”

 

Barnes just gaped at him.

 

“I got it wrong,” Steve continued, ducking his chin like he could turtle his head into his turtleneck sweater.  “Why were you asking about me, then?”

 

Barnes stared at him for a moment, calculating.  Steve could see the moment he made the decision, and knew he’d played the encounter _wrong_. He’d meant it to be more of a deflection so Barnes would think he was harmless and less of a game of chicken. “Next weekend works for me, you just took me by surprise by asking first.”

 

Steve could practically hear the teeth gritting.

 

“Oh!” Steve smiled and hoped it didn’t look too much like a wince. “Friday or Saturday night?”

 

“Why don’t you give me your number and I’ll figure out which works better with my schedule?”

 

“Sure!” Steve answered, grateful that he never brought his normal phone with him on Captain America business. That didn’t account for any of the times that he’d happened across a crime and stopped it, but he couldn’t think about that.  He had to assume that Barnes would have trouble getting a warrant on his phone number without concrete proof that Steve was anything other than an art professor.

 

He was acutely aware that Barnes was watching his every reaction to this conversation, so he kept smiling as he held out his hand for Barnes’s phone without hesitation.  Steve was a fucking reckless idiot who should know better than to poke at things he shouldn’t, but then his entire personhood was dedicated to poking at things he shouldn’t.  

 

So.

 

“Here,” Steve said, handing Barnes back his phone.  “I texted myself so you have my number.”

 

“Great!” Barnes said with a smile that seemed to echo how Steve felt. “I’ll text you soon.”

 

x.x.x.

 

Every once in a while there was a fight that went south for Steve, not because of skill levels, or even because he was distracted.  It was the chaos theory, and not really in the mathematical sense.  No person could account for all variables. 

 

You couldn’t foresee a civilian reacting poorly and mowing down both the hero and the ‘villian’ he was fighting over a botched robbery, for instance.  He’d been watching for the robber to produce a weapon, not for stray vehicles jumping the curb, and had ended up splayed across someone’s windshield.

 

Then the civilian started freaking out, a crowd formed, and Steve ended up limping through the store and into the back alley before the cops came.  It was the type of ridiculously FUBAR sequence of events that would make everyone who knew him mock him for ages.

 

Meaning Sam and Carol, but if you knew Sam and Carol then you knew neither of them were the kind of person to let something like this go.  By the time he unlocked his front door, there was already a YouTube video and over 10k views of the whole unfortunate incident.

 

So he was already expecting his phone to have a few dozen texts on it laughing at him (and also checking in to make sure he was ok).  What he didn’t expect was the message from Detective Barnes:

 

 _Saturday,_ it said.

 

Steve stared at the message, wondering if there was more. Barnes didn’t seem like a particularly taciturn man, but he also knew that neither of them were going on a date because they liked each other.  He tossed his phone on the bed and shook out his hair, still feeling the sensation of wearing the cowl mask in the way his sweat had dried on his forehead.  His shoulder hurt and he was positive there was a large bruise on his thigh, but overall he’d walked away from getting hit by a car.

 

And ok, maybe it was going 10 miles an hour and he should have seen it approaching in slow motion, or enough of a slow motion that he could get out of the way, but he was also trying to avoid getting punched in the face at the time.

 

 **Steve:** Sure.

 

Two could play the one-word-text game, Steve decided, walking over to his kitchenette to pour himself some water. By the time he was finished downing the glass, Barnes had answered.

 

 **Detective Barnes:** Ok.

 

It almost startled him into smiling.

 

 **Steve:** Ok.

 

x.x.x.

 

Friday night saw Steve in an alleyway facing off against three armed men, one of them moving like he was trained military. It took him longer than he liked to put them to the ground, getting a knife graze to his side in the effort.  The thick material of his uniformed had stopped it from being a more serious cut.

 

He stole the knife to cover his tracks but there was no way of telling whether any of the drops of blood on the ground belonged to him or anyone else. Now that Detective Barnes was looking at Steve, maybe seriously, he had to be more careful. There were any number of ways the detective could get Steve’s DNA after spending any amount of time with him.

 

Like as on a date.

 

x.x.x.

 

“Well you’re not going to sleep with him!” Sam exclaimed when Steve explained his logic.  “Oh fuck,” he continued and put his hand over his face.  “You’re going to sleep with him.”

 

“I was thinking more of stealing a glass I’d been drinking from,” Steve pointed out, scowling.  He crossed his arms over his chest, trying to decide if he was more insulted or exasperated.  Steve had never had sex with someone who could expose his secret.  Not in his entire life.  Definitely not the reporter with the case of hero worship who followed him around, and not Detective Barnes either.

 

“No. No. You’re definitely going to sleep with him.”  Sam looked resigned.  “The only reason your lizard brain would have come up with this overly complicated plot in the first place is if you were interested.”

 

Unfortunately, Steve didn’t have a defense for that one.  He couldn’t help it.  He liked his men competent.

 

x.x.x.

 

“Hi,” Steve said, dropping down in the seat across from Barnes.  He took care not to reveal any of his injuries.  His body was always a map of them, which was one of the reasons sex was definitely off the table, but this past week had been particularly trying.  Not bullet-wound trying, but few things were.  “I thought I was early,” he continued, looking at his watch.  “But it looks like I kept you waiting.”

 

Steve was, in fact, deliberately fifteen minutes late.  It wasn’t a fifteen-minutes-with-Starbucks kind of thing, it was more to help with his absentminded aesthetic. He’d put on his thickest cardigan, the one his hands disappeared into despite his height and his arm length, and he looked disarmingly soft.

 

It was a lie, but a good one.  It was one that came naturally to him these days.

 

“I was early,” Barnes answered. It wasn’t to dismiss Steve’s explanation. He was berating Steve for keeping him waiting even longer than fifteen minutes.

 

“It’s a personality quirk, I’m afraid,” Steve answered, picking up the menu and looking at it.  The easiest way he’d found to sell his character was to not make eye contact and to appear distracted. Eye contact could be an effective weapon, and that included the lack of it. “I get caught up in things and don’t notice the time. I have an alarm set for the days I lecture so I’m not late, but it still happens a few times a semester.  The fifteen minute rule isn’t a real thing, but that doesn’t mean the students don’t believe in it.”

 

“You’re lucky I don’t believe in it,” Barnes answered him.  

 

“So you’re telling me that when you were in college you wouldn’t have left if the professor was fifteen minutes late?” Steve asked, deliberately misinterpreting Barnes’s statement and trying not to have fun while doing so.  There was something about Barnes that was fun to aggravate, and Steve wasn’t going to look at that too closely.

 

“Oh, I did.” Barnes flashed him a grin.  “Then I grew up, got a job, and realized that punctuality was more complicated than rolling out of bed and throwing on a shirt.”

 

“Most days, at least,” Steve answered, grinning back.

 

“Most days,” Barnes agreed, and laughed.

 

x.x.x.

 

As far as first dates went, Steve had more successful ones, if the measure of success was getting a second date (or sex). Steve had pulled out some of his more annoying traits, like explaining his full thesis on queer coding in ‘Les raboteurs de parquet’. When he’d decided on the topic almost fifteen years before, it had felt like a new frontier to explore.

 

Now it was derivative.

 

Steve liked to think that was in part thanks to professors like himself. He spoke to that limitation to his research too, as though he was speaking to a fellow art history nerd, and to which Barnes had answered ‘is that the shirtless floor scraping one?’

 

If one of his students had said that, Steve would have verbally tore a strip out of them, but he was also aware that in the world outside of academia, Barnes being able to place the painting without a visual cue (and with the original French title) was ahead of 85% of the population.  Steve was grudgingly impressed.

 

Steve was, unfortunately, also playing a short game of How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days (or less), so being impressed by the man wasn’t what he was aiming for, so Barnes was also treated to a verbal analysis of why ‘the shirtless floor scraping one’ was demeaning to the artist and to art in general.

 

“The title literally translates to _The Floor Scrapers_ ,” Barnes pointed out, “and they’re shirtless.”

 

That was accurate.  “You speak French?” Steve asked with what was an inappropriate amount of interest.  He was a little too into men who were not only competent but also spoke multiple languages.  It was well known that Steve had slept with most of the male language professors at Columbia and a few at NYU.  

 

Including a few who identified as straight, and one who was married but hadn’t disclosed it at the time.

 

Steve was a bit of a slut for polyglots.  He tried to remind himself that even if Barnes spoke French, that didn’t mean he was multilingual.  French was nothing. 

 

“Do I look like someone who speaks French?” Barnes asked.

 

He looked like someone who’d dressed up for a date and was having a miserable time.  Steve should be pleased about that.  Fuck, Sam was **right**.

 

“Well, it was…” Barnes answered once he’d taken the last bite of his meal and paid his half of the bill, looking aggravated and a little off focus, like he’d set his goals on the door and couldn’t bring himself back to look at Steve.  “The food was good.”

 

“Yes, it was,” Steve answered, doing his best not to look amused as he took a sip of the coffee he’d ordered as a digestif just after Barnes had asked for his bill. He’d done it to see the look on Barnes’s face at the idea of being trapped with Steve for longer. Then, while waiting for the coffee, Steve had explained the actual meaning of digestif as an alcoholic beverage consumed after the meal (and sometimes after coffee) until Barnes’s eyes glazed over and he looked trapped.

 

Barnes held Steve’s gaze for a few moments, like he was warring with himself over saying something further. His lips parted, he looked pained. “Well,” he repeated, holding out his hand for Steve.  “It was nice getting to know you more.”

 

“Likewise,” Steve answered, even though he’d barely allowed Barnes to get a word in.  He smiled and gave Barnes the weakest handshake he was capable of. Barnes dropped his limp fingers almost immediately and practically fled.

 

“Ouch,” their waitress said while offering Steve more coffee.  “That didn’t look like it went well.”

 

“Didn’t it?” Steve asked with a mild, absent tone, and then put his head in his hands.  He’d fucking played himself.

 


	3. The one where they both lie about how much they like dating

Steve wasn’t dumb (or overconfident) enough to think a bad date would be the last time he’d see Detective Barnes.  If the man was smart enough to look at Steve and think ‘this is the one’ then he was smart enough to wonder if Steve had directed the conversation to be as alienating as possible.

 

He had bigger things to worry about, or as Sam would remind him, more selfless things to worry about than his own drama.

 

(Sam would also remind him that he needed to remember that sometimes the biggest thing Steve should be concerned about was himself and selflessness wasn’t inherently better.

 

Steve sucked at that.)

 

There was a white supremacist group terrorizing the Fort Greene area, a John Doe washed up in Red Hook that the police had locked down information on, and a first year exhibition for his MFA students was opening at the end of the week.

 

And, of course, there was the search he was running on Detective Barnes.  If there was one thing Steve was good at, it was research, but even still it was slow going.  He lacked confidence in his computer skills.  Steve with a doctorate and access to Google scholar, library databases, and a few open source add-ons could find any article he needed.  Steve as Captain America wasn’t sure if Googling “Detective Barnes” on the internet connection he was stealing from the store above his staging area would bring the entire force of the NYPD down on his head.

 

Who was he going to ask? Sam? Sam had stopped doing iffy things on the internet back when Kazaa was still a thing. Carol? Carol could fly any plane imaginable and could hotwire a car, but tended to call people back when she received a text.  Steve was in the weird position of being the only person who knew his identity as Captain America and also knew what a VPN was.

 

Things Steve found out about Detective Barnes: His full name was Detective James Buchanan Barnes. He grew up in Flatbush with a younger sister and won a city-wide scavenger hunt when he was 17 that granted him a partial scholarship to NYU.  When interviewed, Barnes had basically pulled an Elle Woods and said ‘what? Like it’s hard’ despite competing against most of the undergraduate students and high school seniors living in the area.

 

Steve was…

 

Well, he should probably be terrified that a man like that was coming for him, but mostly he was a little turned on.

 

x.x.x.

 

Steve was more comfortable in the tight fit of his Captain America outfit than he was in the suit he was wearing, and the way he kept tugging at the jacket was like a pointing marquee sign to his discomfort. Two of his MFA students had already given him a once-over, like he’d surprised them by wearing something semi-fitted that proved he had thigh muscles, and that in itself was cause for some of his awkwardness.

 

Every time he wore this suit, he promised himself he’d go buy a boxier fit that helped hide his physique as well as his comfortable sweaters did, and every time he took it off he promptly forgot.  It seemed like a waste of money to buy an outfit specifically to make his students think he was dowdy, especially when the reason he hadn’t was because he didn’t want to face the Dean giving him tips on how to shop.  Steve could wear as many oversized knit sweaters to the office as he wanted, but when it came to professional conferences, academic meetings, and hosting events, he had better _show up_.

 

Or run the risk of having his inseam measured while his boss threatened to call the men of Queer Eye on him.

 

And he would, too. At least 2 of the 5 of them were in New York at any given time and sometimes they rotated.

 

“Doctor Rogers!” one of the school’s benefactors said in an exuberant tone, already reaching to shake Steve’s hand from two feet away. “I always enjoy seeing what you and your students do with this room.”

 

“Thank you,” Steve answered, smiling with teeth, and trying not to think about how the man’s wife was the accountant for one of the drug cartels. There were at least three people in the room Captain America took issue with and Steve would have to tolerate breathing the same air as for the next three hours.

 

“I have my eye on that subtractive drawing second from the left.”

 

“You know I can’t sell you anything,” Steve answered, “and neither should the students.”  That didn’t stop them from making their own arrangements, though, and Steve wasn’t going to stand in the way of opportunity. “I’ll introduce you to the artist.”

 

He was turning to see who the next person he’d have to make small-talk with was and his eye caught on someone walking in the door.  The man’s slightly floppy hair and carriage was familiar, even if he’d traded his NYPD windbreaker and date blazer for a fashionable leather jacket.  The last time Steve had seen him, he’d been walking out on their date.

 

Detective Barnes.

 

Focused entirely on honing in on Steve’s exact location.

 

Jesus, the man was like that robot from that movie. He just kept coming back.  Barnes found Steve easily in the crowd and stared at him, even as he made small-talk with the person next to him.

 

Fuck.

 

Steve ducked behind a pillar, taking a deep breath to control the way his heart was racing. He’d once stared down half a dozen guns without so much as a flinch, but having Detective Barnes look at him with his keen blue eyes made him sweat. It was equal parts the way the man smiled at him (and the way his ass looked in those pants) and the way Barnes saw through Steve so easily.

 

And yes, Steve was into that as well. His last boyfriend had never suspected Steve was anything other than who he seemed, despite some of his odder injuries. Steve had explained away his scars as being caused by the car accident that had killed his mother and put Steve in physical therapy for a year, despite some of them being still pink and healing.

 

Detective Barnes had taken one look at Steve and knew there was something under the surface.  He hadn’t even seen Steve naked. 

 

Who wouldn’t feel a bit flattered by that? Annoyed, frustrated and concerned, but flattered.

 

Steve took a deep breath and stepped away from his hiding spot, walking directly over to where Barnes was standing in front of a piece of art, frowning at it.  “Detective,” Steve said in greeting.

 

“Professor,” Barnes answered him, a smile pulling at his lips.  He affected surprised well, but Steve knew that he’d expected that they’d run into each other.

 

“Have you been waiting long?” Steve asked, unable to help himself.  He knew better, honestly, but it was difficult not to poke Barnes back. Flirting with the man was a risk he couldn’t help but take.

 

Barnes opened his mouth and then closed it.

 

Steve took a sip of his champagne and then cast his eyes down behind his glasses, shy and uncertain.  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.  “I assumed you might be looking for me?”

 

“Of course,” Barnes replied.  “I enjoyed our date the other week and thought we might do it again sometime.”

 

He _enjoyed_ the date?  Steve observed Bucky for a moment. His jaw was tense but he was doing his best to look interested.

 

“I enjoyed it too,” Steve answered, outright lying. “I’m done here in an hour and a half, would you like to get drinks after this?”

 

Steve watched Barnes look at his watch. It was clear to anyone with eyes that Barnes definitely did not want to wait that long, and yet saw the opportunity in getting Steve alone again.

 

“Sure,” Barnes answered.  “There’s a bar two buildings down.  I’ll meet you there at 9:30?”

 

x.x.x.

 

Steve was a man of his word, which was unfortunate when his word was being used to arrange a second date with Detective Barnes.

 

“It’s not the action of being heroic,” Barnes explained, back on the topic of vigilantes. He was drinking his second pint of IPA that Steve knew about, but Steve would bet that was it.  Barnes looked relaxed, not on his way to being drunk, and there was still a keen awareness present on his face when Steve asked about his job.  “I believe that it’s our responsibility as humans and as members of a society to step in to help or to stand up and say no when it’s needed. That’s heroic. Vigilantes go seeking those situations so they can punch away their frustrations and ‘bring criminals to justice’.”

 

“And there’s harm in that?” Steve asked, carefully keeping his tongue.  “Even if the end result is seeing killers off the street?”

 

“There’s harm in leaving a half-dead murderer for the cops to find, sure. Especially when we can’t find evidence of the initial crime. Then it just becomes an excuse for violence.  Innocent until proven guilty means nothing to these people.”

 

“And that’s why you do what you do?” Steve asked, expecting it to be rhetorical.  He could see that as a solid reason, even if debatable. 

 

Barnes shrugged like he didn’t have an opinion and turned his glass on the table, leaving rings of condensation.  “I don’t really care about their reasons, I’m in it for the puzzle.”

 

“The puzzle?” Steve echoed, anger overwhelming all his good sense.  “You’re part of an organization that systematically continues the oppression of the underprivileged; they turn a blind eye to organized crime, child trafficking, white collar…”

 

“Hey!” Barnes inserted in a firm tone, everything about him coming into focus even as his body language remained casual. “The NYPD does what we can within the confines of the law and within budget constraints.”

 

“It seems to me,” Steve continued in a low tone, “that maybe you shouldn’t be hunting the people who work outside of the confines of the law, especially since public perception of the NYPD is at an all time low.”

 

“Vigilantism won’t help our public perception. It makes us look incompetent.”

 

“Neither will arresting the vigilantes the public have come to rely on to keep them safe.”

 

Barnes paused to observe Steve and then tilted his glass and clinked it against the one Steve was holding.  “You got me there.”

 

“What happens after you arrest them?” Steve asked, because apparently once he was on the subject, he had zero self-preservation.  Most of his friends would tell him that he always had zero self-preservation, but Steve had been _trying_. Barnes looked casually dressed, but Steve could still picture him whipping out a set of handcuffs and arresting Steve over their shared plate of fries.

 

Probably because Steve outright told him that he _was Captain America_ in order to make a point (or close enough to doing so that there was a trickle of sweat on Steve’s brow and he almost expected Barnes to _arrest him over it_ ).

 

Barnes blinked at him and looked thoughtful.  “I arrested Moon Knight three months ago,” he said in a casual tone that indicated that this little fact was the precursor and not the main point.  It still put chills down Steve’s back.

 

Of fear.  Of interest.  He was impressed, and terrified, because Moon Knight had been far better at covering his tracks than Steve ever was.  

 

Jesus fuck, it was actually a growing difficulty not to sleep with Barnes.

 

“I don’t know what happened to him,” Barnes continued, but seemed thoughtful about it rather than braggy. “I don’t have great follow through once I’ve solved the puzzle.  What happens afterwards doesn’t usually matter to me, my focus is just on solving it in the first place.”

 

“I see,” Steve answered slowly. And he did, probably far more than Bucky meant him to.  “So you’re the NYPD’s faithful bloodhound? Unquestioning of where you fit within the repression of certain demographics or mindsets so long as you get to solve your mystery.”

 

Barnes didn’t answer for a long enough pause that Steve wondered if he was about to be punched or walked out on. He didn’t know Barnes well enough to know which it would be.  Yet.

 

“What you’re saying is fair,” Barnes assessed, but despite his words he looked angry, jaw tense.  “But not easy to hear, and also not a fully accurate representation of my personality.  I realize I haven’t given you much reason to…” he cut himself off, blowing out a gust of air.  “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

 

That went better than Steve expected, honestly.

 

x.x.x.

 

As an awkward sidebar, Steve and Detective Barnes parted in front of the pub.  Steve said ‘good night, Detective’ and Barnes went ‘I go by Bucky’ as though they’d have a third date and his first name mattered.

 

Then they went their separate ways, which just so happened to be equidistant subway stops for the B line.  Steve watched Barnes notice him sitting on the train through the window and then divert his path to the next car so they wouldn’t have to sit together.

 

That seemed to be a clear representation of the success of their date, even if Barnes had given Steve his name and hadn’t arrested him out of frustrated annoyance.  At least Steve had been successful in alienating the man.

 

Maybe he should put it on his resume.


	4. Steve shut your whore mouth

Steve’s week as a vigilante was slow, even in a month that was shaping up to be busy.  He was waiting for his informant network to come back with information on the John Doe found in the water off Red Hook, the white supremacists were temporarily cowed into not being dicks in public, though Steve had very few illusions about his stern speech changing their minds or hearts, and he’d foiled a store robbery by turning on a light, which was honestly a waste of his armor and fists in a way that made him remember Bucky’s point about vigilantes punching their frustrations.

 

It made Steve itch to have a conversation with the man about heroes versus vigilantes, and whether society currently had the capacity to use the term hero in a genuine way.  He’d tried to have a conversation about it with Sam, but his friend had just squinted at him in judgement and told him that he was splitting hairs that were too thin to even care.

 

And was probably right. The issue was all in Steve’s brain.  He wasn’t comfortable with the idea of being seen as someone who solved all problems with violence.

 

It must be a slow week if Steve was considering _calling up Barnes_ for a debate.

 

x.x.x.

 

“Barnes here,” Bucky said once he picked up the phone, answering his personal phone in a similar way to how he answered his work one - or so Steve imagined.

 

“Hey Bucky,” Steve said, putting the phone between his shoulder and ear so he could make an annotation on a student’s essay.  “It’s Steve. The parks department is hosting one of their Movies Under the Stars movie nights in Sunset Park this weekend featuring the _Art of Brooklyn Film Festival_ and I thought you might want to come with me?”

 

“Hold on,” Bucky said, and Steve could hear him click through something on his side.  “Wow,” he said after a moment.  “That seems real fun. I’m assuming I’m your last resort?”

 

“It will be fun!” Steve blustered, correcting him. He should, professionally speaking, be more insulted by the sarcasm than he was the implication that he couldn’t find anyone else to go with, but since the latter was true he didn’t have much of a leg to stand on.  That’s what happened when you spent a lot of your spare time in armor running around Brooklyn and weren’t what you seemed on the surface.  Your friend group wasn’t the type to see the words “art film festival” and go YAY.  “And I thought we were seeing each other! I’m inviting you out on a date.”

 

“Ah huh,” Bucky answered in a tone that said he wasn’t buying it, and maybe Steve liked him a fraction of a decimal point more just for that.  “Ok.”

 

“Ok?” Steve echoed, and mouthed ‘what the fuck’ to the fake plant on his desk.

 

“Yeah, I’ll go with you.”

 

“Ok…” Steve agreed in confusion.  “Meet you there at 8?”

 

“I can bring chairs if you bring food.”

 

“Sounds good,” Steve agreed.  “See you.”

 

He… had a date with Detective Barnes that he set up _on purpose_.  Steve wasn’t even sure what his life was anymore.  God, he was going to get arrested out of boredom.

 

x.x.x.

 

Steve arrived at the park with a bag of takeout to find Barnes already set up in front of the projector screen. True to his word, he had a lawn chair for himself and for Steve, and a small lunch cooler at his feet. Beyond that, he’d dressed the part of someone attending an art festival better than Steve did, wearing heavy boots, black jeans, and an old band shirt.  Steve didn’t know what he expected.  A cop uniform?

 

“Before you say it,” Bucky said, grinning up at Steve from his insouciant slouch and gesturing to the chairs. “I stopped by my parents’ place before coming here. They’re old-Brooklyn holdouts with a basement full of crap like this. They still know the luxury of space.”

 

“My mother rented all her life,” Steve answered him, sitting in the empty chair.  Bucky had picked a decent angle, not trying too hard to seem like he didn’t care by sitting far away from the screen.  It was a small thing to appreciate, but Steve had been on some shit dates with people who professed to enjoy art, so he knew too many of the tricks by now.  “So when she died I had to decide between taking over her apartment and all her stuff, or getting rid of it.”

 

“Yeah,” Barnes agreed, handing Steve a bottle of Coke from his cooler.  “Whatcha bring to nosh?”

 

“Did you know...” Steve started, pulling out the bag of burritos he’d quickly picked up as a decently easy picnic meal and handing one to Bucky.

 

“If you’re about to tell me alternate slang meanings for nosh, I already know it can be used to mean blowjob. Pretty sure, contextually, you knew I wasn’t saying that.”

 

“Did I?” Steve asked, in what was his flirtatious tone. It took him a few beats of Bucky grinning at him, the corners of his eyes crinkling, before Steve realized he probably shouldn’t be flirting with the man who would put him in jail.

 

But, well. Self preservation and all that. Not a Steve skill.

 

“Maybe you shouldn’t,” Bucky agreed, looking amused and relaxed.  It made Steve allow himself to feel the same way, feeling some of the tension from his shoulders ease out until he could feel the difference in his posture.  “A fifth of that drink is rum,” Bucky told him, leaning in so it was a whispered secret. “In flagrant disregard for rules against public drinking.  It’s a rite of passage for these things.”

 

Steve looked at him.  Bucky took a drink of his Coke, still grinning.  His legs were spread slightly, his spine loose as he lounged against the chair, and he seemed so normal, slightly flushed from the heat of the day, and pleased with himself for finding a way around the alcohol restriction.  Steve opened his mouth to berate him for flagrantly disregarding the rules, especially considering his place of privilege as a police officer, and realized that though he still had opinions, he didn’t want to ruin the moment by voicing them.

 

It was hard not to be attracted to Bucky Barnes.  Steve was realizing that this was a fight he was losing.  It was the metaphorical car jumping the curb: something he should have seen coming.

 

“Thanks,” he said instead, lifting his drink up to salute Bucky’s and taking a healthy swig of it.  The rum wasn’t overpowering but it was definitely present.  Bucky’s gaze was warm, and it made Steve feel heady just from the attention.  He focused on his food for a moment, unable to take the attention without blushing.

 

It didn’t escape his notice that he was supposed to be alienating Detective Barnes and instead was on a date with him that he had no intentions of sabotaging.  He was spared from having to consider his own behavior or come up with something to say by the first film starting, and the announcer introducing what they were about to watch. Steve forgot for a moment that he was anyone other than a nerdy art professor who loved supporting new talent in any medium.

 

He realized 4 short films in that Bucky was attentively watching the screen.  He looked bored and restless, but was hiding it well.  Steve only noticed because he’d seen Bucky hide both of those traits sitting across from him on their first date.  He had absolute control over himself, and didn’t say a single word about how bored he was, clapping respectfully when it was time to clap, and not laughing when someone in the back loudly expressed how glad they were the 3rd short was over.

 

Steve felt like he understood more about who Bucky Barnes was as a person.

 

And maybe Bucky understood Steve more as a person, too, when that same jackass tried to entertain the field again by loudly mocking the 6th short and Steve stood up to face him while lecturing about respect.  Bucky didn’t look surprised and didn’t try to stop him.

 

Steve was thinking so hard about that, he almost missed Bucky laughing at a moment in the 8th film that was in Russian (with no subtitles).

 

But he didn’t miss it, and that was, in the end, the point of impact.  At least this time he wouldn’t be left limping for a week.

 

Probably.

 

x.x.x.

 

“Alright,” Bucky said in a breathless tone.  “I really should be arresting both of us for this.”

 

Steve hummed, unable to speak because he was delighting in the sensation of Bucky’s cock in his mouth.  Bucky’s hand was between his shoulder blades and Steve’s ear was pressed uncomfortably against the steering wheel, and Steve had no idea how he’d gotten there except that Bucky had driven him home, Steve had asked how many languages Bucky was fluent in, and Bucky had questioned what he meant by fluency like someone who spoke more than one language semi-well.

 

“I’m not gonna,” Barnes continued.  “Are you going to call me a hypocrite for it?”

 

Steve probably would if he wasn’t a _little busy_.

 

This was the exact situation that had led to him almost missing his keynote during the 2016 America Art History conference in Seattle.  There had been a dick and attached to it was an Italian scholar who thought Steve’s book was brilliant, but he’d read it in German so he’d appreciate it if Steve would discuss a few of the finer nuances.

 

Steve had a… well, he definitely needed to call it a kink now, didn’t he?  He was deepthroating the guy he should be running away from just because he understood a joke in Russian.

 

“Are you Captain America?” Bucky asked, a bit strained because Steve was sucking at his tip, wet and sloppily.

 

“If you want me to be,” Steve answered, sounding aggrieved but really just trying to expedite this whole thing.  “Sure.”

 

“I don’t believe you,” Bucky finished and _finished_ with.

 

No clues in his come as to whether that was exasperated-disbelief or confirming-he-didn’t-believe-Steve-was-Captain-America-disbelief.


	5. it's only polite to say thanks when you're given a present, Bucky.

 

“This isn’t the relationship we have,” Barnes said, staring at the man trussed up in front of his car.  He had his weapon drawn and was slightly out of breath, which Steve was beginning to learn meant most people would be panting with their hands on their knees.  Neither of them were most people. They trained to be able to give chase and endure.

 

It just so happened Barnes trained to chase Steve.  Steve had seen other cops who would have given up at this point.

 

“He killed 4 people last month,” Steve answered, pitching his voice as high and airy as possible, very aware that he was speaking with someone who’d recognize his voice if he didn’t modulate it. Maybe he should invest in one of those devices that did it for him.  There was probably an app for that.  “There’s a city-wide manhunt.”

 

“Why do you think I’m here,” Barnes answered with exasperation, putting his weapon away.  “I wasn’t looking for you.”

 

Whoops.  That was Steve’s mistake.

 

It felt like a slap to his ego, which was wrong on so many levels he didn’t even want to look at it.  Barnes wasn’t looking for _him_.

 

And Steve had brought him a present and everything.

 

“And I’m going to pretend that this asshole was more of a handful than he is, so I don’t have to explain why I didn’t go after you when you fled,” Barnes continued, giving Steve a narrow look.  “Consider it thanks for the arrest.”

 

Steve gave Barnes a sloppy salute and then bolted down the alleyway.

 

x.x.x.

 

“Repeat after me,” Carol said, smears of grease up to her wrists and most of her attention on the inside of Steve’s motorcycle.  He had to ask her to stop by after it took a bullet.  Better the bike than his thigh, he thought, until he realized Sam and Carol had been talking about his hopeless crush on Bucky. He’d rather face a back alley doctor than that.  “No man is worth going to jail over.”

 

“I know,” Steve answered, frustrated, but not having a better answer than that.  “I know.”

 

“No woman, either,” Carol continued.  “No person.”

 

“I know!” Steve repeated, and told himself not to continue the sentence. It was a losing battle.  “He’s super cute, though.”

 

She rolled her eyes at him.  “You’re hopeless.  I’m not visiting you upstate.”

 

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Steve answered, awkwardly fumbling with one of the screwdrivers in her kit.  He both wanted to and desperately didn’t want to tell her.  “I may have had his dick in my mouth.”

 

“Unless you end that sentence with how you bit it off, I don’t want to hear about it,” she answered.

 

“Uh…”

 

“NO!” Carol said like she was chiding a puppy.  “Go tell Sam.”

 

There was no way Steve was telling Sam. He hated admitting when Sam was right, he was always such an asshole about it.

 

x.x.x.

 

Steve happened to be there due to reports of gunshots.  It wasn’t a fight he’d been deliberately pursuing, except in the way that any fight that put civilians at risk was his fight. When he arrived, a car had been professionally boxed in, the front-end crumpled, and Steve recognised it as an unmarked cop car before he realized it was the one Bucky was usually assigned to.

 

Not that he kept tabs or anyt… yeah, ok, he couldn’t even lie to himself about that one.

 

He felt his blood go cold and he almost made a critical error in exposing his location by giving into the urge to run over to check.  Instead, he held himself still for a moment and then found a better vantage point.

 

There wasn’t anyone in the car, but he could hear yelling in the alleyway.  He moved to check it out, swiftly and silently with all the stealth training he could muster.

 

Steve was surprised to find that he’d been hoping it had nothing to do with Bucky until he found Detective Barnes’s partner hunkered down beside a dumpster, his face white with fear and a strip of cloth tied around a wound on his thigh.

 

Steve knelt to check on him.  The Detective watched him warily but didn’t say anything about having Captain America in his face.  That might have something to do with how tightly he was clenching his jaw.

 

“Has anyone called for help?” he asked.

 

The man nodded and gestured to his phone.  He was 8:47 minutes into a phone call, the screen lighting up to show Steve the call duration.

 

“Ok,” Steve said.  “I’m sorry, I’m going after Barnes.”

 

Bucky’s partner didn’t protest, but even if he did, Steve wouldn’t listen.  He always did his best to save everyone he could, but there were a few people in his life he’d go above and beyond for, and he was surprised to find Bucky was becoming one of them.  

 

It probably shouldn’t be a surprise, but he’d had zero intention for Bucky to mean more to him than being his adversary on the force.  The mistake was Steve’s for ever thinking he could date someone and not fall for them.

 

He moved further into the labyrinth of alleyway in this section of town, turning two corners towards the sounds of shouting and interspersed gunshots. The conversation was happening in Greek - literal Greek, not ‘it’s all Greek to me’ Greek - and Steve almost didn’t recognise Bucky’s voice as he eased his way closer, keeping his back to the brick building behind him.

 

He remembered from all the articles on Detective Barnes that he’d put the heir to the Nicolaides fortune in jail a few years back where he’d recently died.

 

If every cop had Barnes’s track record, Captain America might be out of a job.

 

Steve didn’t give his strategy much thought, just took a deep breath and stepped forward into the alley.  “Hey!” he yelled to the men who had Barnes hemmed in.  “Four against one. Hardly seems fair.”

 

Then he took the gun away from the closest one in a move that was too reminiscent of what he did the day he met Detective Barnes: which is to say he slapped it away.

 

Barnes used the distraction to tackle the person closest to him.  Between the two of them, they had all four men disarmed and ziptied in less than five minutes.  Only two of them likely had broken bones, so Steve took that as a win.  Barnes made a good partner when it came to disarming and tying up assholes.

 

He was burning with curiosity to find out what they’d wanted with Bucky and how Bucky was able to speak Greek enough to answer them (and if Steve had to label the tone, it sounded like a sarcastic taunt).

 

(if there was one thing Steve might be into more than professionally disarming a mobster in three moves or less, it was being cornered and taunting one anyway).

 

(and that was ignoring the language thing. It was best to ignore the language thing.)

 

Instead, Steve gave Bucky a sarcastic, sloppy salute and moved to disappear down the alley.  For once, he didn’t move fast enough, or Barnes was too close to begin with, because he got less than five steps away before Barnes was grabbing his wrist to force him to stop.

 

Or maybe Steve’s heart hadn’t been in it.  It was still somewhere back before he said ‘four against one’, running on fear and adrenaline and the hope Barnes was ok.  He’d had the man’s dick in his mouth.  He was a little invested now.

 

Steve paused instead of fighting Barnes off, turning slowly to look at him.

 

Barnes looked furious, his hands balled into fists that Steve expected to come flying at his head at any moment.  “Captain America,” he said in a dangerously low tone.  “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a reckless idiot?”

 

“Multiple people,” Steve answered, still trying to catch his breath, and surprised that his heart, while beating quickly in answer to exertion, also felt like it was being squeezed by a band.

 

Of emotions.

 

Jesus.

 

Barnes was looking at him, weighing him. There was something about his gaze that made Steve’s stomach jump, and he was still trying to figure out if it was a positive or negative thing when Barnes seemed to make up his mind and pushed Steve back against the brick wall.  It was darker in the alley without the angle of light coming from the street, and Barnes’s eyes were narrowed, almost glinting from what little light there was.  “I should slap cuffs on you right now and turn you in,” he said, furious, words bitten off at the end.

 

Steve stopped himself from asking why he didn’t and flexed his wrists as a reflex to make sure they were free. Bucky’s hand was gently gripping one in a false facsimile of a cuff, but Steve could break it if he wanted to.

 

They looked at each other.

 

“Why don’t you?” Steve’s traitorous mouth asked.

 

Bucky made an aggravated sound and kissed Steve instead.  It was rough, not really a friendly kiss, and also the first time Bucky’s mouth had been on his.  Steve was aware of that in the back of his brain, a jeering voice pointing out it wasn’t Bucky’s fault Steve had faceplanted on his dick.

 

Steve made a noise in the back of his throat, partially surprise and arousal, but also partially concerned that this was a trick.  But, he was a reckless idiot, so he still brought his hands up to clutch at Bucky’s jacket front and pull him closer. His body was a heated brand through Steve’s suit and every muscle in his frame was tense like he was fighting against himself.

 

It was terrifying and hot, and in a way all the more thrilling for it.

 

x.x.x

 

“Ok, out with it,” Sam said as he bounced the basketball to Steve.  Steve almost missed catching it, and may have if Sam hadn’t aimed the bounce for his hands.

 

“What?” Steve asked on reflex, but he knew.  He knew that all the tumultuous emotions and worries going through his head were written all over his face.  Sam barely managed to raise an eyebrow before he was blurting out, “Barnes kissed me last night.”

 

“I didn’t think your dates were going that well,” Sam answered, clearly not hearing the story about the film festival yet and all the more innocent for it, and used Steve’s distraction to steal the basketball and do a layup.  

 

“They’re going fine,” Steve grumbled, because despite his best intentions to sabotage them, they were.  Fucking James Buchanan Barnes was a secret nerd himself.

 

Of languages.  And for puzzles.

 

“And I didn’t think you had a date last night,” Sam continued slowly, now that he wasn’t focused on using Steve’s distraction to score a point.  “You let me know you were out as Cap.”

 

“I was out as Cap,” Steve answered, failing to steal the ball from Sam, but managing to knock it enough that Sam had to react to the change in direction.

 

“And then you met up with… you said Barnes?” Sam questioned, stopping entirely with the ball in his hands.  “Detective Barnes?” Sam’s voice raised with incredulity.

 

“Yes,” Steve answered, impatiently, because Sam was starting to get the _issue_ and Steve wanted to hurry up to the advice part of the conversation.

 

“The Detective kissed you?”

 

“ _Yes!_ ”

 

“Holy shit,” Sam said, and then sat heavily on the basketball court floor, still holding the ball.  It took Steve a moment of looking at Sam’s knobby knees tremble out from his long shorts to realize Sam was laughing.  “You’ve got some kind of Lois Lane / Superman thing going on.”

 

It wasn’t all that funny to Steve.  “It’s not Superman,” he grumbled, grabbing the ball from Sam’s hands and making a shot for the net.  Sam didn’t even seem bothered by the steal, he was too busy laughing at Steve.  “Bucky is definitely not Lois Lane.  For one thing, he suspects the truth.”

 

“Well it’s not Batman / Commissioner Gordon unless those comics went very different from how I remembered,” Sam pointed out, getting to his feet and brushing off his butt.  “How do you know he hasn’t figured it out already?  He doesn’t seem like the kind of person to kiss the vigilante he’s hunting.  But, he’s dating you, Steve.”


	6. *throws shade*

Thanks to Sam’s pointed question: 1. Steve lost the game of pick-up, which was probably Sam’s intention all along. 2. Steve was paranoid to the sense of hyper-vigilance with Bucky.

 

And then his paranoia was paranoid that he might be telegraphing his paranoia to Bucky and accidentally revealing everything.  Steve wasn’t great at this secret identity, alter-ego romancing the person he was dating thing.

 

And, like, fuck. Captain America wasn’t even trying to date Bucky.

 

And, even more fuck, Steve wasn’t supposed to be trying to either.  

 

But he was.

 

“I have a bit more to supervise here,” Bucky was saying over the phone.  He’d called Steve when he was going to be late for their arranged date time, which was way more courtesy than Steve gave him in the beginning.  “There’s… um… clean up that needs to get done.”

 

Steve could hear people speaking behind him.  It sounded like a medical examiner.  He immediately moved to pull his laptop towards him to look up what might be happening.  “Where are you? I could come to you in an hour or so?”

 

“It’s fine, I’ll come to you. Are you home?”

 

“Yeah,” Steve admitted, pushing down the little voice that pointed out Bucky might be checking to see where Steve was based on a possible Captain America sighting.  “I’m home.  Do you want to postpone?”

 

Steve wasn’t sure what he wanted the answer to be, and that was worrying.

 

“No,” Bucky said, “I’ll come to you. And bring takeout. Are you ok with Vietnamese?”

 

“I grew up in Brooklyn.”

 

“I know you think that’s an answer to questions like that,” Bucky answered him, sounding amused and only slightly exasperated.  “But it’s not.  I grew up in Brooklyn too, and my parents were very meat-and-potatoes for supper, Wonder bread sandwiches kind of people.”

 

“I’m ok with Vietnamese,” Steve answered him, standing so he could look out the window.  He touched the glass pane and felt ridiculously like a romance novel heroine looking forward to being swept away by the dreamboat hero.

 

Shit.

 

“And iced coffee if they have it?” Steve asked.  “There’s a place right off the subway stop down the block.”

 

“Sure,” Bucky said, and Steve could hear someone call out to get his attention in the background of the call.  “And I know. I was staring at it during… and have been craving it since.”

 

Bucky had been craving the food or something entirely different? Steve wondered, filling in that blank and considering whether the condoms in his nightstand had expired.

 

Then he realized Bucky was still talking.

 

“…That’s why I suggested it.  I’ll be done in maybe two hours. I’ll text you when I’m close. Also, if I’m here a lot longer than that, then I’ll let you know I need to cancel.  Let’s say by 9?”

 

“Ok,” Steve answered, trying not to sound like a man who was debating running to the corner store before a date.

 

“Ok, I’ve got to go,” Bucky said easily, as though he wasn’t making someone wait for him.  Like he wasn’t rushed at all, and Steve was the most important part of his day.

 

“Bye,” Steve said, and realized just how in trouble he was.

 

x.x.x.

 

Bucky showed up with takeout, looking tired but casual. He’d stopped to change at some point and had on a soft t-shirt that looked older than Steve’s doctorate (and therefore had the unfortunate distinction of being tight across his chest and biceps in a way Steve was fighting with himself not to notice).  “Do you work tomorrow?” he asked, handing Steve his coffee.

 

“Yes,” Steve answered, taking a sip.  “But I can’t turn down cafe da.”

 

“Wow,” Bucky drew out sarcastically, and brought the takeout bag over to Steve’s counter.  “Your pronunciation is shit.”

 

“I’d like to see you do better,” Steve grumbled around his straw.  Then he tried not to look too interested in what Bucky was going to do.

 

Or too seductive.

 

“Ok,” Bucky agreed, and then pointed to the containers in front of Steve.  “That’s bun dac biet, and the salad rolls are goi cuon. Of course,” he finished with, “my pronunciation isn’t awesome. It’s just better than yours.”

 

“Sure,” Steve agreed, speechless, and thinking about how he’d kissed this man as Captain America and that Steve Rogers wanted him more than anyone he’d ever wanted in his life.  That clever mouth had been _on his_.

 

And yet not.

 

Fuck the whole convoluted situation.

 

Bucky shrugged and looked sheepish.  “Don’t look too impressed. I have an ear for languages, so I’m just repeating what the person at the restaurant said.  They could have mangled it for all I know.”

 

“Right,” Steve answered, unconvinced, and grabbed plates from the cupboard.  He was entirely focused on Bucky, but also a thousand miles away, wondering if Bucky knew that he’d kissed Steve or if, to Bucky, he’d kissed a stranger the night before.

 

“It’s the language thing, isn’t it?” Bucky asked.  “You’re looking a little like the only thing stopping you from jumping me is that you’re holding something breakable.”

 

“I have a thing.”

 

“A thing?” Bucky asked in an arch tone.  “I just spoke a language I don’t understand to you and you look like you’re about to blow me again.”

 

“Is that what you want?”

 

“NO!” Bucky answered, but he looked like he was going to laugh.  “Is it what you want?”

 

Steve didn’t know what he wanted.  That was way too complicated of a question for him to answer.  He wanted Bucky to be Bucky and not Detective Barnes, but they weren’t separate people just like he wasn’t a different person when he was Captain America.

 

So Steve had blown Bucky and Detective Barnes had kissed Captain America, and only one of those things freaked him out enough to make him want to make a ‘do you like me’ note like he had as a skinny and small 6th grader.

 

At least the 6th grader had confronted the problem directly.

 

“Ok,” Bucky said when Steve didn’t answer and instead stared at him with wide eyes for two minutes, putting down his food on Steve’s ottoman.  He rubbed his hands together in a nervous gesture and then gave his full attention to Steve.  “Here’s the thing. I think I actually like you.”

 

“Uh…” Steve managed.

 

“We had a rocky start,” Bucky admitted.  “You came off as this pedantic know-it-all and I was only there to check up on my suspicions that you’re Captain America.”

 

“Yeah,” Steve agreed, and then realized that he wouldn’t know that unless he _was Captain America_.  Shit.  “What?”

 

Bucky waved the question aside.  “Did you know I was the one who caught the Bensonhurst strangler last year?  I tracked down an organized crime member who had gone underground before that, and that was right after I found the dick who had been abducting children from Coney Island for years. So when the NYPD wanted a taskforce to solve the issue with vigilantes in the city, I’d already closed some of their most dangerous open cases.  Some without having them assigned to me.”

 

“I didn’t know that,” Steve answered, even though he absolutely did know most of it.  His search on Bucky had brought up a lot of success stories.  It was intimidating…

 

...ly hot.

 

“So, you know, I thought about what you said about my job.  Captain America does solid work and if I was a civilian, I’d be on his side for most of what he does.”

 

“You’re not a civilian.”

 

“No, and there are a lot of vigilantes out there who don’t have the same morals. I think my job was meant to focus more on them.  At least, that’s how I’m choosing to interpret my mobilization.”

 

Bucky was trying to tell Steve something, and Steve wasn’t sure it was what he wanted to hear.  Bucky not going after Captain America = yay.  Bucky losing interest in Captain America = should also be yay, but _really wasn’t_. “So you’re giving up on the puzzle?”

 

“I’m not really sure there’s an end to the puzzle with Cap, but I’ve solved what I needed to solve,” Bucky said genuinely, and then reached out and grabbed Steve’s hand.

 

Steve squinted at him.

 

“So maybe we can actually date now?  None of this bullshit hanging over our heads where you pretend to be boring and I pretend I don’t have ulterior motives?”

 

“You want to date me?” Steve echoed, feeling like his brain was getting whiplash from the quick stop in direction.  “Exclusively?”

 

“Yes,” Bucky continued.  “So far I like all the things I’ve learned about you, even the annoying things, and I think we’re at the precipice of actually committing to this or walking away.”

 

And yet Barnes had kissed… him… the night before.  “So no kissing other people?” Steve asked.

 

That was weirdly specific, wasn’t it?  He shouldn’t know that unless he was someone Barnes went around kissing.

 

Bucky looked amused, though.  “Just you.”

 

x.x.x.

 

Bucky kissing Steve was a lot more tentative than Detective Barnes had kissed Captain America.  His fingers were a gentle pressure on Steve’s jaw, tilting his face as he leaned in to help align the angle of the kiss.  It was soft, almost careful.  Bucky pressed his lips against Steve’s, a simple brush of skin against skin, and Steve yearned for the brand of Bucky’s hands against his hips again.

 

It wasn’t a bad kiss for a first kiss, but to Steve it wasn’t their first kiss, and their first kiss had been all wild adrenalin and danger.

 

So he deepened it, leaning into Bucky and parting his lips a bit more in signal.  Steve’s hand pressed into the middle of Bucky’s back to nudge him in and Bucky knelt, swinging his leg over Steve’s so he could get in closer than sitting next to each other allowed.

 

“Hi,” Steve said, feeling the corners of his eyes crinkle from how widely he was smiling.

 

“Hey,” Bucky answered, moving close so he could run his mouth and the tip of his nose down Steve’s jaw in a soft gesture.  “How about I return the blow job and then you ride my dick?” Bucky whispered in his ear, a lot dirtier than his soft touch betrayed.  “Does that seem amenable to you?”

 

“I…” Steve hesitated, thinking about the still healing graze on his side.  Bucky might not know about that particular wound, but he was smart enough to understand the why’s of it.  Steve would have to trust him when he said he had no intention of tracking Captain America anymore.

 

And that trust was a huge thing.

 

Then Bucky’s smile turned wicked and he repeated himself in French, whispering the words against Steve’s neck. "T'es vraiment adorable. Et si je te suçais aussi, et qu'ensuite tu t'empalais sur ma queue? Ça te conviendrait?"

 

That was playing dirty.  Steve wasn’t even surprised that Bucky had figured out that particular button. He wasn’t particularly subtle about it.

 

“Yeah, ok,” Steve agreed, stripping off his shirt.

 

x.x.x.

 

Bucky’s phone trilled in the middle of the night, and Steve semi-woke from his sleep to the sound of it accompanied by Bucky moving out of bed to put on his pants.  Steve turned in bed to observe him, and at Steve’s movement Bucky paused to watch him back. That look he got when he was trying to solve something was back on his face.  “What is it?” Steve asked, his voice a croak of someone still half-asleep.

 

“Work,” Bucky answered succinctly, leaning forward to press a kiss against Steve’s forehead.  “Go back to sleep.”

 

That seemed like solid advice to Steve.

 

It wasn’t until Steve fully woke up in the morning, feeling pleasantly like it was the morning after fun sex and regretting he didn’t have Bucky next to him to push back into his sheets and work off a bit of that morning-after-fun-sex horniness, that Steve checked his phone.

 

He had 12 notifications from his academic Twitter, a text from Bucky about how he wished he had borrowed a shirt, and a text from Sam.

 

 _You’re welcome_ , it said.

 

“For what?” Steve wondered out loud, but his alert for Captain America in the news gave him the answer to that.  Apparently, Sam had donned the cowl and had an eventful night, all while Detective Barnes had been touching Steve’s dick and sleeping in his bed.

 

It was one hell of an alibi, and it should make everything easier, but somehow it made it way more complicated.  Because Steve hadn’t missed that Bucky was implying that he’d figured out his secret identity and didn’t care.  He’d have to be a complete moron to completely miss that.

 

It was the reason he’d allowed himself to let go, not caring if Bucky saw the life-map of scars over his body, the most recent one newer than the first time they met.  He knew that Bucky thought he knew, and now Bucky would either be convinced he was wrong or think Steve set this up on purpose.

 

“Fuck,” Steve said and threw down his phone.

 

x.x.x.

 

Bucky didn’t seem any different that night, inviting himself over to Steve’s apartment with takeout.  They sat on the floor in front of Steve’s coffee table again, Bucky’s ankle pressed against Steve’s as he downed his half of a true New York style pizza with a dedication that said he hadn’t paused for more than a snack since the last time they did this.

 

“How was work?” Steve asked, curious in a boyfriend way, but also information seeking.  He wasn’t sure where they stood anymore, if he’d ever known.  He’d fucked up almost every point in their relationship and still wanted more.

 

“Work-like,” Bucky answered.  “Long, considering I woke up at 3am to look at property damage caused by some dumb asshole in a costume.  Yours?”

 

“Two classes and office hours,” Steve answered.  “So, also long, but I got to sleep in until 7.”

 

Bucky hummed.  “Mine is about to get longer,” he said, hiding a yawn behind his fist, getting a smear of sauce on his chin for his effort.  Steve wordlessly handed him a napkin.  “There’s a serial arsonist moving between precincts,” he explained, wiping off his face.  “Targets families. A real piece of work. I think I’ve found the pattern, I just need to back up my work and it’s…” he yawned again.  “Sorry, I can’t discuss this with a civilian, I must be really exhausted.  Excuse me.”

 

Bucky stumbled to his feet, needing to use Steve’s coffee table to help him stand, and then went to the bathroom.

 

While Bucky out of the room, Steve cast his eye over to the messenger bag Bucky had dragged with him, tempted.


	7. Steve, you don't need a therapist, you need a swift kick to the head (and also probably a therapist)

 

Taking care of Bucky’s arsonist was easy.  Bucky had notes on his predictions of where the next fire would be set, a connection of where each of the families’ lives intersected, and a rough description from one of the kids. Steve hadn’t been able to do much more than give the rest of the evidence a cursory look, but from what he saw, the cops needed more than the circumstantial evidence they’d gathered and Bucky’s ability to solve puzzles.

 

So once Bucky left with his files, intending to go home and burn the midnight oil, Steve put on his Captain America suit and went out. The armor was unpleasantly hot in late spring, and the soup sweat on his back might be gross, but at least it wasn’t as undignified as putting on a puffer jacket over it in the winter.

 

It took three nights before Bucky’s hunch paid off.  Steve ziptied the arsonist to his own equipment and left a burner camera of pictures as proof, conceding to what Bucky needed.

 

He wondered if that counted as a love note to Detective Barnes and pictured Bucky going ‘this isn’t the relationship we have’ again.

 

“So he knows?” Carol asked.  She was wearing retro sunglasses and a leather jacket. Juxtaposed with Steve’s cableknit turtleneck, she looked more like the kind of person Detective Barnes should be dating.  Steve envied her her ability to be herself in public, even if he was a product of his own making.

 

Of course, both of them were wearing heavy clothing in 85 degree temperatures, so maybe they were both idiots.

 

“I don’t know,” Steve responded, taking a drink out of his frappe.  “Maybe?”

 

“Maybe?” she repeated and sounded sardonic.  “He said he wasn’t hunting Cap anymore and then you just had sex with him?”

 

That sounded about right.  “It wasn’t that cut and dry.  He said a lot of things about puzzles.”

 

“Ah huh.”

 

“Then he spoke to me in French.”

 

“Ah huh,” she answered with way more judgment.  

 

“And then Sam went out as Cap while we were fucking, so I don’t know where we stand anymore.”

 

x.x.x.

 

Carol was absolutely no help figuring out Steve’s bullshit, which was fair since Steve should be figuring out his own bullshit.  What he really needed was a therapist.

 

 **Sam:** You need impulse control is what you need.

 

That too.

 

x.x.x.

 

Steve and Bucky got into a routine of not talking about it.  They went on dates, had sex, and enjoyed each other’s company.  Steve still went out as Captain America and Bucky didn’t show up in an attempt to thwart him.

 

Steve came close at least five times over the next two weeks of saying “so you know I’m Captain America, then?”

 

And then didn’t.  He didn’t suddenly find his impulse control, he just… couldn’t.

 

Because what if Bucky didn’t know?

 

What if Bucky needed him not to say it in order for this to work?

 

Bucky’s apartment turned out to be in his parents’ attic, which made Bucky flustered and apologetic, especially for misleading Steve into thinking it wasn’t.  It was also a lot nicer than Steve’s apartment, which wasn’t entirely a hole, but also didn’t fit what movies tended to think professors could afford.  He had a lot of student loans.

 

And, you know, a side business with zero income.

 

“I know,” Bucky said, scratching the back of his neck like he was embarrassed. There were files littering his coffee table, likely sensitive documents he shouldn’t be bringing home, let alone trusting Steve to be around, and there was a framed movie poster for The Rocky Horror Picture Show behind his television.  “I knowwww,” he repeated when Steve’s eyes landed on it.

 

“At least it’s framed.”

 

“I’m not really great at changing things around.  It went up and it’s lived there for the past decade.  At least it’s not Fight Club.”

 

“I’d break up with you over Fight Club,” Steve answered mildly, perusing Bucky’s bookshelf.  It was, unfortunately, an occupational habit.  As in - have an occupation where books are integral, and you find yourself nosey about what people read.

 

Bucky had a shelf dedicated to unsolved true crimes, and a lot of science fiction.

 

“Science fiction,” he mused out loud, running his finger over Gibson and Herbert, and Le Guin and Schwab, a mix of new and old, by a variety of authors.  “The unknown?”

 

“I like a good social commentary,” Bucky told him, digging in his dresser for a clean t-shirt.  “Want to stay the night?  I promise my parents won’t knock and offer milk and cookies.”

 

Steve was about to say yes when he received an alert from his computer algorithm about a robbery in progress.  There always seemed to be some kind of robbery in progress and Steve thought about ignoring it.  “I have to... “ he said, already calculating how long it would take to get his Cap uniform.  “I forgot to grade…”

 

“Of course,” Bucky said before Steve could get out a full excuse that made sense.  He didn’t seem particularly surprised.  “Do you want to come by after you finish work?”

 

x.x.x.

 

By week three, Bucky was showing up to Steve’s classroom on his 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm block Mon/Wed/Fri with a coffee.  It was black with copious cream, just the way Steve liked it, and hot enough to burn his tongue. Unfortunately, it was also from the kiosk outside Steve had been boycotting since his second year at Columbia.  

 

“Because they wouldn’t let you pay it forward?” Bucky asked, sitting on Steve’s desk as his students filed in.  

 

“They wouldn’t let me pay for a student who couldn’t afford a small coffee,” Steve corrected.  “It’s different.  The kid was crying, the barista refused to budge on the matter, and it became something not about the money but about social elitism and bullying.  So they’ve lost out on… at least $5 a day, plus tips, on coffee for the last seven years from me.”

 

“Ok,” Bucky answered, reaching to take Steve’s cup back.

 

“I’m not rude about it if someone treats me,” he said, letting Bucky take it.  “My boss does, sometimes.”

 

“Your students don’t because they know,” Bucky observed.  “It’s why they were watching me on Monday when I handed it to you to see what you were going to do.”

 

There was that.  Angie had looked like she swallowed a whole lemon at the idea that Bucky was giving Steve coffee from a place he boycotted and Steve took it.  He’d almost expected a lecture on respecting himself (and not changing for a boy) after class.

 

He still kind of was.

 

Bucky dumped both of their coffees in the garbage.  “Your students love you,” he said, and Steve was thinking very similar sentiments about Bucky.  He could fall for someone who stood with him like that, in ways that seemed small and maybe a bit dumb, but mattered.  “I bet not a single one of them drink that coffee.”

 

“You’d be wrong,” Steve told him, but was grinning.

 

“I bet they think you’re all soft and absentminded, too, but cool because you show up at protests and do things like boycott franchises and rage against the machine.  You’re so dreamy, Doctor Rogers…”

 

“Shut up,” Steve said, laughing by this point as Bucky batted his eyelashes at him.  His police badge was hooked to his belt, visible to the entire class, and Steve used his leather jacket to tug him in for a quick kiss. Bucky went with it, and then gave Steve a quick squeeze, like he was delighted by him. “Now get out before you ruin my cred.”

 

“Be good to Doctor Rogers, kids!” Bucky told the class as he left.  “He hasn’t had any coffee since lunch!”

 

x.x.x.

 

Of course, with an exit like that, Steve had to go home with Bucky.  It was almost the rules.  He met Bucky outside of the precinct his task force was working out of, feeling particularly brazen for being right under their noses.  Bucky would probably introduce him to his coworkers someday.  That might be fun.

 

By the time they reached the front stoop of the Barnes house, Bucky’s hand was in places it shouldn’t be in public, and Steve was definitely not paying attention to his surroundings, which was how both of them missed the van that pulled up beside them until it was too late.

 

x.x.x.

 

Steve’s fingers weren’t numb, yet, but he could feel them throb slightly each time he shifted against the restraints around his wrist.  They’d gotten him in the chair by gunpoint while Steve was still trying to blink away the pain in his brain, more interested in Bucky than they were his spare.

 

And that was on Steve.  Steve should know better than to give into pain, even if he was knocked unconscious for a few seconds. He was blinking furiously, trying to remain awake and find out what was happening with Bucky, pulling desperately at the ropes holding him in place and thinking about the fucking irony.

 

From what Steve could tell, the Nicolaides heir had died in jail and someone wanted Bucky to pay in blood.

 

And Steve felt useless. He had a headache, there was blood pulling at a wound on the back of his head, and he couldn’t help but consider what brain damage might do to his ability to finish his rage-book on why Banksy was a hack that he’d been working on since his Master’s degree.

 

And, like, he must have some kind of brain damage if his thoughts were flitting to _that_.  

 

“I’m sorry,” Bucky kept repeating, a soft mantra that helped Steve focus on him. He’d been sniper-still the entire time they had company, calm, quiet, and deadly with his anger.  Steve had been on the other side of that focus. He knew how disarming it was.  Now that they were alone, Bucky was struggling against the ropes binding him to the chair. His breathing was pained, and at first Steve thought it was from his struggling, but he could hear the wet sharpness of Bucky’s coughs and the difficulty he was having catching his breath after each one.

 

“Are you coughing up blood?” Steve asked, and he could feel that same angered-calmness settling over him.  He was suddenly focused, fighting through the fog in his brain to find Bucky.

 

“No,” Bucky answered, and it wasn’t a lie, not really, but Steve could tell it wasn’t the whole truth either.

 

“But?”

 

“But. I might soon. Something is moving in my ribs every time I cough.  It’s getting harder to breathe.”

 

Steve was silent for a moment, working on ripping his hands free no matter what the damage was.  He’d face a broken or dislocated thumb for Bucky.  He’d face Bucky arresting him the moment they were free. He didn’t really care if Bucky knew or not. It wasn’t selflessness. It was maybe the most selfish decision he’d ever made.  “I’m sorry.  I’ve been lying to you.”

 

Bucky snorted. “Are you concussed? Can you just save us now and get to the heartfelt confessions about your secret identity later?”

 

“ _What?_ ”  Steve _very well might_ be concussed, but he was pretty sure the Lois Lane character didn’t go ‘shut up Clark, I know you’re Superman.’

 

Or… Steve had never read the comics.

 

“I’m bleedin’ out here,” Bucky answered in a sulky tone.  “I knew the moment you opened your goddamned mouth, ok? Your voice is kind of recognizable.  Now can you pull your heroic shit already? What the hell, Steve?”

 

“I…” Steve shouldn’t feel like he’d been blindsided. He’d spent so much time assuming that Bucky knew that getting confirmation of it should have been an AH HA moment.  Instead, somewhere along the way, he’d come full circle and decided that Bucky must not know.

 

“What do you think that whole conversation about solving puzzles was about?” Bucky continued, sounding grumpy and a bit frustrated with Steve.  “I fucking _kissed_ you,” he reminded Steve, and then coughed again.  Steve could feel his frame shuddering through it and listened to Bucky gasping for breath afterwards as he yanked one of his hands out of the ropes binding them.  His thumb was bent out of place, and blood was dripping down his fingers from the abrasions on his wrists, but it loosened the hold on his other hand significantly and he was able to pull that hand free with a few short tugs.

 

“Hold on,” Steve said, reaching his free hands back to brush against Bucky to let him know that Steve was almost there.  Steve moved through untying his feet quickly. Getting out of sticky situations like this was part of his training routine, though usually not with materials that caused actual damage. Carol had let him try once, and the resulting doctor’s visit where he’d had to pretend the damage was the result of unsafe bondage practices hadn’t been the highlight of Steve’s health history, that was for sure.

 

But it had been good for preparing him to work through the problem with what he had.

 

“We’re gonna talk about this,” Bucky slurred, blood dripping down his face, and his mouth was swollen and bloody. He focused on Steve, though, aware he was crouched in front of him and tracking his movements.  

 

x.x.x.

 

While Steve was getting his thumb shoved back into place, which wasn’t a fun experience but also wasn’t the most painful reason he’d ever been in a hospital, Bucky was getting a CT scan to discover the damage his broken ribs had caused his internal organs and tissues.  The doctor working on him seemed to assume Steve was in shock about the whole kidnapped-with-his-cop-boyfriend ordeal rather than radiating fury from every pore, and kept gently telling him that once Steve finished getting checked out, they’d bring him back to Bucky.

 

He walked into Bucky’s hospital room with his hand wrapped and three stitches in his scalp to find Bucky sitting in bed eating jello. Jesus, how long had they taken to debride his rope burns and check him for a concussion?

 

“You thought I just go around kissing weirdos in cowl masks?” Bucky asked, waving his spoon at Steve the moment he saw him.  “Do you have brain damage? I’m going to yell at you a bit.”

 

“A mild concussion. Are you dying?” Steve asked, checking Bucky over carefully and looking around for his chart.  His ribs were wrapped and his arm was in a sling, but he looked more alert than Steve did.

 

Which was kind of unfair.  Steve didn’t particularly want to be yelled at.  He was already seeing all the ways he’d been an idiot for himself, thankyouverymuch.

 

“Eh, some broken ribs, they’ll need to do surgery on my arm once the swelling goes down, but seriously! I kissed your secret identity and then asked you to go steady the next day. What the fuck, Steve?”

 

Steve opened his mouth to defend himself, but there wasn’t really anything to say when it was presented through that lens.

 

“I even,” Bucky said pointedly. “Even told you that I didn’t care what happened after I solved the puzzle.  The thrill was in the mystery, not the arrest. I basically told you that I knew you were Captain America but wouldn’t be arresting you.”

 

“I didn’t think you’d arrest me!” Steve answered.

 

Bucky sucked in a breath and put down his jello.  His hand automatically went around his waist to support his ribs, but the breath hadn’t been caused by pain.  It had been preparation.  “Do we need to break up?” he asked.

 

“Why?” Steve asked, horrified by the idea.

 

“We’ve been miscommunicating for weeks,” Bucky answered in what Steve was sure he thought was a rational tone.

 

“Yeah,” Steve interrupted him, feeling a sense of panic well up from beneath his breastbone at the idea of losing Bucky. It was more potent than it had been when he and Bucky were captured. At least then Steve had a clear answer for what he needed to do to survive. “But we’re communicating now.”

 

“I thought we were communicating before!” Bucky answered, sounding frustrated and tired.  “We were never really having the same conversation.”

 

“Then let’s have one: When we started dating, I did my best to be the most boring, _pedantic_ , annoying jackass you ever met, but you liked me anyway. I wanted you to be convinced that someone as boring as I was could never be Captain America, and when I thought maybe you were convinced by it, I was disappointed.”

 

“You’re still a boring, pedantic, and annoying jackass,” Bucky argued.  “Yesterday, you explained the history of transfer printing to me when I was just trying to enjoy my coffee.”

 

“And now I find out that every time I gave you an excuse so I could go off and do Captain America stuff, you knew exactly what I was saying.  Which means that the few hints I got from you were deliberate too...” he paused as the thought occurred to him.  “Oh Jesus Fuck, did you send me to take down that arsonist?”

 

Bucky paused, his entire body stilling deliberately.  Steve wasn’t even sure he was breathing.  Then, he slowly turned his head and met Steve’s eyes.

 

“Oh,” Steve answered, and then reached for Bucky’s hand.  “I’m dense. Sorry.”

 

“You’re maybe the smartest person I know, but man can you be stupid.  I think you’re turning me into a morosexual.”

 

“I have a doctorate!” Steve yelped at the same time Bucky grabbed his shirt with his good arm and reeled him in for a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> Find Fannishlove: [Twitter](https://twitter.com/shinzz1) | [ Tumblr ](https://fannishlove.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Find RelenaFanel: [Twitter](https://twitter.com/relenafanel) | [ Tumblr ](https://relenafanel.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Masterpost: [Reblog on Tumblr](https://relenafanel.tumblr.com/post/185707932823/pedantic-affectations-art-fannishlove-link-to)
> 
> Art post: [Art by Fannishlove](https://fannishlove.tumblr.com/post/185707806189/artworks-for-pedantic-affectations-by-relenafanel)


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